19 July 2008

Netroots Nation report - Trouble The Water

The remarkable new documentary Trouble The Water (dir. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal) screened last night at Netroots Nation. It tells the story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath from the point of view of Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, a pair of New Orleans street hustlers. Some of the most gripping footage was shot by Kim herself -- she had bought a video camera on the street for $20 the week before Katrina, and began filming herself and her 9th Ward neighbors as, unable to evacuate, they prepared to face the storm. She continued filming during the hurricane and as the nearby levees topped and her city flooded. Following a harrowing exodus, Kim and Scott met Tia Lessin and Carl Deal in a central Louisiana Red Cross shelter. These two Brooklyn-based filmmakers had originally planned to shoot a film about the Louisiana National Guard, examining how their deployment overseas crippled the response to Katrina's devastation. But while these issues and others still lurk in the background, Trouble The Water is, at its core, a disarmingly intimate portrait of Kim and Scott and the way their lives and the lives of those around them are transformed by the aftermath of the storm.

The emotional core of the film comes in a tremendous scene where Kim, who had recorded some homemade hiphop tracks under the name Black Kold Madina, discovers that her Memphis cousin has the only surviving copy of her CD. She throws the disc on the boombox and raps along to her track "Amazing," her pre-Katrina lyrics taking on tremendous new resonance in light of what we've seen her go through. The audience at the screening burst out in spontaneous applause at the end of Kim's performance -- I am betting this happens a lot.

Trouble The Water opens August 22 in NYC and LA. Fercrissakes go. Everyone needs to see this film.